Froggy Gets Dressed

Whew!  The week flew by...preschool has been keeping me busy.  Our summer preschool is for our students with more intense needs....for whom 12 weeks of down time would have us starting back at square one.  My preschool routine is based on ABA and TEACCH philosophies.  Each week I choose a book and we read it each day.  I do that because these students need repetition before they can participate.  By Thursday and Friday, they actively interact with the book and all our activities.  Following our circle time (which includes the usual calendar stuff as well as a language activity) the students do individual work basket task.  I try to create activities that follow the book as well as work on skills.

 

This week we read Froggy Gets Dressed.  I love the story for the wonderful sequencing skills.  I also thought a little snow in our drought-filled scorching summer might be cool! (pun intended)   I created some work tasks, a card game and a craft to go with the story.  The clipart came from kidzclub.com.  This wonderful site has tons and tons of story props for trade books.  It is one of the first sites I hit when I am lesson planning.  Here is a glimpse of some of the things I created.

Get the whole pack here.  This my first posting to Google docs so let me know if you have an problems.

Queen Kay

For the Love of Reading: E. L. Konigsburg

When I was in elementary school, one of my favorite books was From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg.  I so wanted to hide out in a museum and have the same adventure.  I reread it over and over again.  The book won the Newbury Award in 1967.   Princess Pea read the book in fourth grade (and I confess I re-read it  for like the hundredth time.)  It is a part of both of our classroom libraries.  Princess Pea is always shocked when she brings up the book and her fellow education majors have never heard of it.

 

 With six teachers retiring this year, Princess Pea did a fair amount of snatching up books for her classroom library.  From one teacher, she found two other books by E.L. Konigsburg.  Who knew she was still writing after all these years.  We looked her up and she is quite the prolific writer.  We thoroughly enjoyed these two books.

 

 

This summer we encourage you to throw a few E.L. Konigsburg titles along with your usual beach reads.  You won't be sorry!

Queen Pea

Heard at Preschool

Every summer I teach our special ed cooperative's summer preschool.  Each our four preschools across two counties recommend their little lovelies who they think need a little extra boost over the summer.  I have been teaching it for eight years.  For eight years I have laughed and laughed at the things they say or the predicaments we get in.  Today  was an affirmation that the younger generation are the techie kings.

Overheard on the playground from a delightful young man on the truck play equipment:

:"Does this firetruck have a Garman?"

Overheard at playtime, from a little sweetheart playing with the cash register:

"What should I tweet?"

Queen Pea

Book Pals Part 3 -The Saga of a Turtle

Those little touches to a classroom often don't come cheap.  We have found  if you dig through those bins of stuffed toys in your local thrift store, you can find Book Pals for very very cheap.   After pricing Book Pals online, (anywhere from $15- $50) we decided to try and recreate them.  See our Fancy Nancy here and our Pete the Cat here.  While out recently, we were looking for stuffed characters we could adapt and re-purpose for pals when we came across these friends.

That's the dinosaur from How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? (among other sequels.)  Next is Thing 1 from Cat in the Hat.  He is sitting next to Sam I Am from Green Eggs and Ham.  On his left is Franklin the Turtle.  Finally there is a dinosaur that we do not know the name.  He looked familiar and he is a Kohl's for Kids creature which is usually a book pal. Any ideas of the book?  We didn't pay over $1.50 for any of them.  WooHoo!

   So we first found this guy at a Goodwill.  We thought he looked just like Franklin without a hat.  We thought we could create a hat for him.  We were sure we had found our Franklin.

  Then we stopped at another Goodwill and found this guy.

   What were we thinking???  We hang our heads in shame.  How can we call ourselves book lovers when we make this kind of mistake???  They look NOTHING alike.  

   So now we have this unnamed turtle.  Maybe we can find a rabbit and then we will have the characters from The Tortoise and the Hare.  Despite our confusion, we still think we scored big in our search for book characters.  What do you think?

Queen Pea and Princess Kay

Pinterest Inspiration - The Teacher Chair

Princess Kay is working on her classroom.  We will be posting before and after pictures in a few weeks (it is going to take that long.  Cleaning out a retired teachers 40 years of stuff takes a while!)  She is doing a travel theme and has been looking for a classroom chair.  We pinned this one a while ago.

Amber's Teacher's Chair

We found this white chair and considered just duplicating this Amber's chair since Princess could make a zebra fit a travel theme (and she has always had a love of zebra....it was her freshman dorm room theme.)   However, she dug out an old atlas from our closet and asked if we could use it somehow.

So with a little Mod Podge,  a little paint and a coat of polyurethane and Princess Kay's first ever teacher was created.

One room project done and  a few  several  a million more to go....good thing my own classroom just needs a few touches to get it ready.

Queen Pea

I am linking to the Pnterest Challenge at
 Young House Love
Bower Power
Censational Girl